Daisy tilted her head toward Rose. “Is Chip . . . not . . . ?”
Rose shook her head. “He moved out two months ago claiming he had fallen in love with some woman he met on an airplane. An airplane! But he’s come back, begging, telling me he was a fool and it was a huge mistake and he loves only me, forever. I believe him but . . . I don’t.”
“Oh, sweetie, and you didn’t tell us because—”
“Because I was the one who put that Superman cape on him, and I didn’t want any of you to know that my swan was an ugly duckling.”
The four women huddled around each other, their heads bent and touching foreheads in a circle. The night settled upon Rose’s words and they knew, each of them, that they had chosen the bird all those years ago that spoke to them even now in a way they’d never expected.
* * *
When they told the story later, the story about their last morning on the island, they couldn’t agree on whose idea it had been to take the kayaks out on the coastal river side of the island. Victoria? She swears it wasn’t. But Daisy and Rose swear it was. Beatrice believes it was Daisy, but either way, Daisy and Rose were in a double kayak, an orange one so battered it looked like it had been chewed up and spit out, while Beatrice and Victoria rowed in single blue kayaks that Red had dragged from under the house.
“Be careful,” he’d hollered out before they left.
The first half hour had been dreamy as they rowed across the river smooth as a lake, clouds reflected like a world existed below the water, the sun beating down and the breeze cooling them off. For a while they bobbed side by side holding on to each other’s kayaks so they could float.
“What will you do when you get home?” Victoria quietly asked Rose. “I mean . . . will you let Chip come home?”
“That’s the first time you haven’t said his name three in a row.” Rose smiled at Victoria. “That was nice.” She trailed her fingers in the water and then looked up. “I don’t know. There’s so much I haven’t done because he asked me not to do them—and I still, since the day I graduated, want to write a book. Write something other than a grocery list. I’ve been doing it quietly late at night for a few years, but nothing has come of it. It’s all garbled words that never turn into anything.”
“Well,” Victoria said taking off her sunhat and gazing directly at her friend. “Now you go on and don those swan feathers and . . .”
“If I can find them.”
They all paused simultaneously, as if something beneath them had been turned on full blast; their kayaks began to move rapidly on their own, heading for the sea.
“Whoa!” Beatrice grabbed her paddle.
“Shit.” Victoria pulled her sunhat on quickly. “The tide. It’s going out.”
And with that, they began to row like crazy, separating and pushing hard toward the shore. Hollering at each other in half sentences, zipping the life vests they’d thought unnecessary but took anyway at Red’s insistence.
Rowing so hard her shoulders burned, Beatrice called out. “You think he coulda’ warned us, or something!”
“Whose stupid idea was this?” Victoria hollered as a wave washed over the side of her kayak.
Then they went silent as they each rowed as hard and fast as they could without barely moving an inch. Slowly, and sometimes cursing, they reached the edge of the sandy beach one by one. Almost to shore, Victoria’s kayak flipped over and spilled her into the shallows. Sputtering and laughing, she rose from the water like a sea creature, her long hair hanging in threads and her bathing suit pulled sideways so that one breast, white and pendulous, was exposed. She didn’t even notice as she stumbled to the shore.
“Oh my God, that was thrilling!” She laughed as she fell to the sand. “What a ride.” She reached up and pulled at what was now obviously a hair extension and threw it into the water. Then another.
The other friends looked at each other, and Beatrice spoke for them all. “Who are you and what have you done with our friend who can’t stand to have her hair messed up and her manicure chipped?”
Victoria lay flat, gazing up at the sky. “I have no idea. A Bird of Paradise who is discovering an island life?”
They laughed and then Beatrice spoke slowly, as if finding her words with every step she took. “I’m going to propose to him,” she said, sliding the kayak up to the soft grassy area littered with pinecones and fallen palmetto leaves.
Daisy sat in the sand, catching her breath. “And how is that? It doesn’t seem to go with our romantic narrative, does it? I mean . . .” she grinned. “It wasn’t Eliza Doolittle who wooed Henry Higgins back with a song about growing accustomed
